Ikuro stepped out of the automated transport when it stopped at his destination and put down his black bags. The double doors closed behind him with a little squeek and the empty railcar slowly accellerated on its way to the next stop on the line. He heard the steel sound of its wheels die down and looked around the short concrete platform.
He suspected it from the worn state of the railcar, but this place confirmed very few people ever came here. He glanced across the old adverts pasted to the wall, some faded, some torn. He thought the ad for dog food with the beagle was at least fifteen years old. Assorted trash was piled around the full trash bin in the corner and under the bench with worn out synthetic seating. One of the overhead lights flickering a little completed the picture for him.

He brushed his light blonde hair with his fingers, took out the note with his grandfather’s address from his trouser pocket and checked the local map on the wall. The directions were pretty straightforward but he guessed it would be another hour walking.
‘Oh well.’ he said to himself, hoisted his bags over his shoulders and started walking.

Rail tracks lead the way as he walked between warehouses and construction sites with broken windows and bushes creeping up around them. There was some abandoned equipment, rusting and falling apart because there was no use for it anymore. The same fate befell spare material like piping, wood, sand and stone, cabling.
When he reached the start of the harbour he looked down to the water and the couple of rusty ships there. One had already sunk halfway. He figured it must have been very busy here when more people lived in this area in the past. A flock of birds flew overhead, a couple drifted on the water which must’ve meant fish had started to come back here. He kicked a pebble over the edge and heard the splash a few ticks later telling him the drop was pretty large.

He continued his walk, waiting once at a rail crossing when a cargo train with containers and liquid tanks slowly passed him by. He watched it disappear between two buildings into a tunnel before the warning lights stopped flashing.
Eventually he reached the broad street leading to his grandfather’s place and took a right. He found a two story building to the left that would be the place. It looked like an attached office to a larger construction building. There were only two wooden sliding doors at the centre of the windowless ground floor. The first floor had murky windows along the whole width.
‘Guess you don’t have time to clean windows when you’re good at engineering.’ he said. ‘But then I’m not here to learn how to clean.’
He slid open the doors and entered while calling out for his grandfather.